


Master of None

by mytimehaspassed



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Abuse, F/M, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2010-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-22 06:24:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mytimehaspassed/pseuds/mytimehaspassed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They spend a couple months living in Waco before John turns sixteen, back out beyond an abandoned gas station, in a run-down farmhouse that’s falling over from the weight of the swollen wood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Master of None

**MASTER OF NONE**  
TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES  
Sarah/John  
 **WARNINGS** : pre-series; underage; abuse

  
They spend a couple months living in Waco before John turns sixteen, back out beyond an abandoned gas station, in a run-down farmhouse that’s falling over from the weight of the swollen wood. Sarah likes it because she doesn’t feel bad about punching holes in to the wall to slip her guns inside, not with the brittle drywall and the rotting wallpaper that she staples back up, golden and dirty in the afternoon sun. John hates it only because he’s tired of Texas, tired of the dry, summer heat that rolls likes waves across his skin, sticky and thick.

They’re safe, if only for now, living on well water and the small amount of cash Sarah makes from working as a waitress at the local diner, something from her past, something she tries not to think about as she slides greasy dollar bills in to the clerk’s hands at the grocery store. John goes to school when she tells him to, keeps learning the same things over and over again, “Nothing that’ll save my life,” he says, dark eyes, dark voice, “Nothing that’ll win the war,” he doesn’t say. Mostly, he just spends his days in the old cornfields, picking through weeds to find the few surviving stalks, or rummaging through the gas station’s garage, repairing old car parts for when their truck finally breaks down.

The days John does go to school, he comes back with bruises, dark fingerprints lining his arms, fist-shaped halos over his eyes, his mouth. When Sarah asks, he says, “It’s nothing.”

He says, “Really,” fingering his split lip, his loose teeth.

He says, “Honestly,” but Sarah will teach him how to throw a punch, anyway, just in case. Teach him how to duck and evade, even though she knows he’ll never use it on those other boys, even though she knows he’ll never hurt any of them, no matter what they do, because she’s taught him enough military manners to fly under the radar, and she knows he’s not just gonna go around screwing that up now.

They don’t go in to town much, don’t wander off the farm unless they need groceries, or when Sarah gets word from one of her contacts, uses the payphone in the liquor store because, even if the service hadn’t have gotten shut off from their cell phones, they wouldn’t get a signal out here, anyway. While she’s distracted, John smuggles out bottles of vodka and whiskey, hides them under his pillow with the extra cash his mother had given him, hides them in his socks and under bathroom towels, but only because he’s afraid Sarah will drink it before he does.

They have new names and new identities, and when the teachers call him at school, sometimes he forgets, sometimes he doesn’t remember that he’s playing someone else, that he’s the boy that doesn’t save the world. He meets boys that remind him of what he’s always wanted to be, meets girls that remind him of the foster families he never got attached to, the ones with the sisters and puppies and big houses, the ones that told him they’d take care of him because his mom was sick and she needed all the care she could get. The ones that told him that she was in good hands, locked away in the nut house, drowning in antipsychotics. He sees the boys and girls at school, the small kisses that gets passed in between, and he wishes they could know now what he always has, about his mom, about him, the war, the way all of this is going to end. He wishes he could tell them all, scream it from the top of his lungs, but that’s a one-way ticket out of this life, and he could never do that, if only because then Sarah would be alone.

If only because then he’d never see her again, he’d never make it out of this alive.

Sarah teaches him how to fight, and when they’re all alone, she presses him tight against her, her face flush against his own, her shallow breathing, her warm skin, and she says, “You’re all I have.”

The tears in her eyes that she only shows him, the strength that seems to drip off her bones, John’s hands wrapped around her elbows, his bare feet aching against the wooden floor, she says, “You’re the only thing I have.”

And what she really means is, “I love you,” her lips soft against his, her thumb stroking his cheek, the start of stubble just gracing his chin, the smell of his whiskey on his breath.

And what she really means is, “Don’t leave me,” her pleading words lost on the shape of her tongue, her hair tickling the open collar of his shirt.


End file.
